Political haunists

Here is a little book that launches a nice idea: to make the history of revolutionary specters in France at XIX^e century. It was a century, as we know, ghosts and beyond. All a round, as shown by the immense successes of The white lady (1825), a beautiful ghost at the opera, of Frankenstein (from 1818) and others, in bookstores, not to mention the febrile activity of rotating tables.

So here is the “ Revolutionary specters ». They are called under the invocation of the one who has haunting Europe since 1848 and the incipit of Communist Party Manifesto of Marx and Engels, which also serves as an incipit to this We will come back !. It seems difficult to ignore this spectrum, even if it is not certain that he haunted the French revolutionaries (the first edition in French of the Manifest would be published, according to Maximilien Rubel, in New York in 1872, the first published in France and in volume could well date from 1895).

Specters of all kinds

Specialist in “ Political uses of the past », Éric Fournier invokes of course, in his introduction, more current spectra, ghosts, living dead and other zombies. The following prologue is centered on the Republicans fighting against the Liberal Empire, the last avatar of the Second Empire, who instrumentalized the shot and the deportees of December 1851. This is a campaign led by the Hugo family newspaper, The recallagainst Minister Émile Ollivier, who had forgotten that he had formerly proclaimed “ December 2 specter ».

The first four chapters then share the chronology of the century: the “ Odious spectrum of tyranny (1789-1815), catering being an indisputable return of ghosts, but the spectra of the incorruptible, even that of Napoleon, are also envisaged ; The rise of the fantastic in politics (1832-1848), the specters of the Empire (1851-1871) and the spectral aurora (1871-1914), twenty-seven small pages on the return of communard specters.

The last two chapters tackle “ materiality “(Prisons, flowers, wall, etc.) and spectral and spectral protagonists, through personalities like that of Louise Michel, author of” We will come back ! Who makes the title of the book. In his poem To my brothers written in a Versaillaise prison two days after the death sentence of the Blanquist communard Théophile Ferré, the “ We ” of “ we will come back “Is made up of” Specters avenging ».

Among the materialities, the very name of the immortals places these flowers in the “ spectral ». According to the author, it is the same with Eglantines. The red flag itself would be spectral. Here it is worn by “ A tall and skinny man with a long cadavous face (…) motionless like a spectrum ». This quote from Heine (p. 54) describes one of the participants, whom the poet may have seen, from the insurrection of June 1832, against a background of cholera, during the funeral of General Lamarque-it is the insurrection told in THE Miserable. Victor Hugo, who perhaps did not see it, was content with “ A man on horseback, dressed in black (…) with a red flag, others say with a spike surmounted by a red cap ». This flag, if it was “ spectral “, Probably did not stay for very long. Hugo mentions red, tricolor and even black flags in the rest. There “ spectrality »Black flag deserves to be studied too.

Oppressed puny

First axis of study of this book: the specters that raise oppressed and avoided revolutionary determination (p. 14-15). The specters of the Empire, which fill, after the prologue, a whole chapter of the work, undoubtedly reinforce republican determination. But is it revolutionary ? More massively, the massacres of revolutionaries along the century – mainly in June 1848 and May 1871 – with their “ Dead buried without coffin “, But especially their cohorts of missing and living dead (errors on the person during summary executions, as was the case for Victorine BROCHER, who titled his book Memories of a living downside), could only eat the formation of spectra.

The physical aspect of many oppressed, Parisian workers, whether or not they were victims of these massacres, puny, lean, even emaciated, evokes spectral images, corpses, skeletons. Like the dead leaving their graves in front of the Federated Wall in a drawing by Steinlen, published on June 2, 1894 in The Socialist Chambardwhose reproduction on a postcard opens the beautiful iconographic notebook of the book. We are far from the kind and elegant “ white ladies ».

We also think of the way in which the communards evoked the fighters, alive or dead, of June 1848, revolutionary specters somewhat neglected in this book, according to which the killings were made “ discreetly, in the interstices of the city (P. 71). Really ? There “ cellar “What does the author mentions may well be the one under the terrace of the water’s edge, in the Tuileries garden, in which 900 prisoners were locked up ; It’s more than a gap ! So that, beyond the rare history books of this moment, it is found in Sentimental education where these prisoners, many of whom are already corpses, “ seem to experience a nightmare, a funeral hallucination “, Which materializes in the gunshots drawn on them by the signs.

Despite the massive presence of Hugo in the century, Quatre Treize And the specters he invokes (from Marat, but not only), only three years after the bloody week, are not “ invoked ».

Communards in the floor of Paris

The author says it in his conclusion:

The revolutionaries decide to resolutely invest the resources of the fantastic and the magical cultures to reconnect with large sections of the population (P. 207). No doubt, but the specters have also been widely used against them. At “ We will come back ! »Overlaps a« They come back !

In this regard, this book could arouse studies a little fine of battles for (and against) the amnesty of the communards of the years 1876 to 1880. The “ sinister lifting of paving stones (P. 166), mentioned by Victor Hugo in a famous (and ineffective) speech of 1876, refers to the deaths buried in emergency in squares, sites, etc., before being (at least officially) exhumed in the heat of summer 1871 – enough to make crowds of specters. We have also exhumed the remains of Paris soil communards for decades. The ghost of the opera itself spoke about it, and he had to know about it !

Among many other tracks, the role played during the latest battle (June 1880) of plenary amnesty by the specter of Alexis Trinquet and his chains (of Bagnard, but how do we distinguish the chains of a convict from those of a ghost ?) Waided by the members of its electoral committee, and by the election of this specter in the very district of Gambetta, could be studied in detail in the perspective envisaged by this book. The ghost returning from beyond the antipodes, reincarnated as a former communard, a former convict, now eligible, was beaten in the municipal elections in January 1881, as all his colleagues returned and as announced by an article Time From January 4 (cited p. 120):

Today, the party called the proletarian party strives to supplant in turn the ghosts of the town. Exile, the prison, are no longer titles.

The author used “ A dense network of solid studies in human sciences “(P. 12) and he calls for a” tight examination of sources (P. 9). We can regret that his book does not include a list of these sources (it seems to me that he only uses books and newspapers). It is true that he has only 212 pages, more iconography, all very beautiful.